12 days: A letter to Santa

We actually don't do Santa in the traditional sense around here. Years ago (probably around five, to be exact) we talked about the whole Santa thing and decided that we would not create a fictional character, but would just play along see how things went. I have a friend who decided the same thing, and when her daughter asked if Santa was real, she went Socratic and asked her what she thought. For my friend it turned out that Santa is now a fixture in their home, but when I used the same method on Calvin last year, he decided for himself that neither man nor reindeer could fly, and that "magic" wasn't real so neither was Santa. Interestingly enough, I think the commercial availability of toys was another mark against the man in red. The stories, after all, portray him and his elves as portly toy makers, but we all know toys are made in China these days, not the North Pole (another nail in the coffin—the lack of land at the North Pole).

This probably sounds a little bah humbug, and I know some of our family are disappointed by what they see as a denial of childhood magic, but I have come to believe quite the opposite. Calvin loves to play pretend, and I don't need to tell him that the "magic tree house" on our back deck isn't magic at all but just a plastic yard toy. This is something he already knows, and that knowledge has never ruined the "magic" of the game for him. The same is true about his play kitchen, his dress-up clothes, his stuffed animals, and all the games he acts out in his head. They are all part of make-believe, he knows it, and he loves them all the same, perhaps even more so because he loves them for what they are. Similarly, we didn't need to tell him that Santa wasn't real—he got there all by himself—but that hasn't stopped him from hanging a stocking, writing his letter, and begging to visit impersonators in red all over the area.

And it certainly hasn't stopped him from sharing in the magic of the season that is part make-believe, part music, part tree-in-the-house, part twinkling lights, part gift-giving and receiving, and a whole lot of loving family. This is a magical time of year all on its own.

So here we are, twelve days to go and the letter has been written. In fact, he wrote two so that he could keep one in his journal, and we may even get a chance to deliver the second one in person later this week.

Lots of energy

A little science sounded good today. Lately all Calvin has wanted to do is read. Which is great. He finishes one book and moves on to the next one. He has it in his mind that he wants to read all of the Magic Tree House books in order of the series. I've been picking them up for .25 a piece when they come into the sale room at the library, and since there are 45 books in the series, he's had plenty to do as of late. Between books he grabs his backpack and notebook and tears through the house on some mission, pretending to be Jack and Annie. It's fun.

But today a little science sounded good. It's been a while since we visited the BSFU chapters and when we last left off we were talking about energy, so that's where we picked up, talking about the different forms of energy (a simplified version) and how we use them in everyday life. We had checked out a few books from the library that were nice to have, but not stellar, and mostly we had a good time chatting about how to conserve energy. Even better...coincidentally Calvin received a set of Snap Circuits from my aunt and uncle for St. Nicholas Day, and he and Jon have been going to town with it since then, so we spent quite a bit of time with that, too. It's a great set and we're really loving it.

Holiday Nights

It was the weekend of our annual Christmas outing with our good friends. Calvin spent Saturday night with his grandparents while we enjoyed cheese, fruit, wine, scallops, an evening of festivities at historical Greenfield Village, and, finally, more fruit, cheese, wine, and dessert.

This evening is magical very year for us. It was frigid this time around, temperatures dipping to near twenty with a brisk wind, but the sky was clear and the moon was full. We all have a great time together with good food and lots of laughs, and there is something very beautiful about Victorian Christmas traditions, or really anything Christmas and historical. And making creme brulee together was a lot of fun.

Calvin also had a great night, and has yet to stop talking about the shaped pancakes his grampa made for him this morning (including a liopleurodon, apparently—we'll never be able to top that).

Tea and a show

I took Calvin to see a stage production of Little Women today. We have a great local theater company that focuses on stage productions so that they can be enjoyed by children. We've been attending the children's shows for a couple of years now, but this was the first show we've seen that was aimed at older children, and Calvin loved it. It was almost an hour and a half of show and he loved every minute. In fact, his only disapointment was that it stopped there, because they only did the first half of the book.

During the actor talk-back followin the show, Calvin raised his hand with two questions, one about the props and the other about the time period of the costumes. He spoke loudly and clearly and I was pleased to find that he has none of my reservations about speaking up in a crowd. Then on our way home we talked endlessly about scenes and scenery, about sets, costumes, acting, lines, and all the people who are involved in stage production. And he asked if we could see another play next week. And a musical.

Then we came home and had tea while he wrote about it in his journal.

Cave paintings on a Wednesday

Today turned out not to be for chores. Who needs clean laundry anyway? We're still doing swim lessons every Wednesday at the Goldfish Swim School on Wednesday mornings, something that Calvin loves, and while we're in town we tend to run errands. But when we came home we got right down to the serious stuff and created some cave paintings.

Cave paintings are mentioned in several of the videos we've watched on prehistoric human life, and we checked out a couple of books from our library, too—Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave, which was the best source we could find for pictures, and The First Painter, which was a fantastic story book with beautiful illustrations. So today we tried our own. Calvin collected items from the yard that would have been available to the original cave painters, busted out the washable red paint (which he called ochre for the duration of the project), and tried his hand (and fingers and pieces of nature) at painting a mammoth, a Megaloceros, and other designs he'd seen in the books.

It was a lot of fun. A little messy, and a lot of fun.